A little behind the curve. Just got back from vacation.
The plan was for Jamie to go against Blais. When Blais came up, the team should have told Jamie that the strategy was for her to go and she needs to go. She (of course) refuses and when Padme calls for the next chef, the team calls out “Jamie!” and everyone else refuses to go out.
For the other chefs -
Angelo: “Let me help you …”
Chef: “Back the fuck up and get your hands of my dish!!!”
These chefs need to grow a set of balls.
It doesn’t really matter, though, since they weren’t really competing with Tom. They were competing with each other to see who could make the best dish in 8 min., 37 sec. They could have just brought out a card with the time on it and the challenge would have been the same (although having Tom as “pace-setter” was more fun.)
This weeks preview looks like fun. There’s always been a joke that cheftestants do everything but catch the fish they cook.
Well, this time they go deep sea fishing. Lucky sods. I’d love to be out there with them.
For a chef, you can’t get better fish than fresh out of the water.
Those women were having a blast pulling those fish in.
By far, my favorite episode of Top Chef since season 6. Lots of fun watching them out at sea fishing. I also like that the chefs were cooking with ideal ingredients. Fish literally pulled straight out of the water and vegetables from a roadside farmers market. How much better can it get for a chef?
The chefs strengths and weaknesses certainly showed through. Carla knew exactly how to fillet that blue fish and remove the bloodline and tendons. Tiffany obviously knew nothing about removing the bloodline and it ruined her dish. There’s really no excuses here. Tiffany just didn’t know how to properly fillet a bluefish. Jamie always claims her thing is cooking fresh with local ingredients. Well she had that, and still screwed up. PYKAG
I’m most puzzled how Richard, Marcel, Fabio could so badly fail at conceptualizing a dish. It’s like they are incapable of creating anything except restaurant dishes. I remember reading that Marcel took a few months off after his season and fished Alaska. You’d think that experience would have yielded some great dishes for fresh caught fish. Anyhow, this team surprised me tonight.
FINALLY!
Okay, now that I’ve got that off my chest, on to the episode. For one, between everyone on the boats and Blais and Fabio in the market, this episode was hilarious. I hope the finale is Blais, Dale, and Fabio.
Speaking of Dale, calm Dale is so much cooler. Pretty much everyone is cooler. It seems like Marcel and Jamie are the only ones that haven’t matured.
As for the challenge, they really need to lock these things down. I’m tired of team challenges where everyone just makes their own dish that don’t even go together. If everyone’s not going to work together, just make it an individual challenge. This could have been an individual challenge easily.
Also, even if you don’t read it, Colicchio’s newest blog has the best title ever:
Classic example of too many cooks spoiling the broth. With good fresh fish and peak season farmer’s market produce, and especially at a party on the beach, the best dishes are going to be relatively simple. If they were all doing one dish they had to do something fairly complex to justify it. When you get that many elements in a dish they tend to cancel one another out.
Jamie has to be up for some sort of award for getting the furthest in a reality competition show without doing anything worthwhile. Her dish tonight sounded perfectly horrible–what the hell can cucumber water add to a piece of sauteed fish?
Oh, and Marcel needs to stop acting like a baller. He makes Vanilla Ice look like Tupac. I really thought Tre was going to kick his teeth in while they were hanging out on the roof.
One last comment before I go to bed:
I really wish Spike was still around, just to have him go head to head against Fabio in a Restaurant Wars Front of the House Schmooze-Off.
After rewatching, I noticed Marcel was drinking booze straight from the bottle as he strutted and did his gangsta thing. Dude must be a mean drunk. Usually he’s just obnoxious. One of these days he’ll go off on the wrong guy at the wrong place.
Overall, it seemed like all the chefs had a good day in spite of the looming double elimination. After last weeks Asian disaster, they needed a day to unwind.
I loved, loved, LOVED this episode! Having them catch their own fish was brilliant. Actually, the fishing part may be my favorite part from this week.
Well, I did love the elimination too. Jamie finally gone!
I also liked that Carla took a really almost impossible fish like Bluefish and hit it out of the park.
Ha! I was gonna call him MC White Boy. Did you, or anyone else notice at the beginning of the sequence on the roof Marcel takes a big gulp out of a bottle of Bombay Saphire Gin in the middle of his rant?
Dude.
No wonder he’s acting the idiot. Gulping gin (even fancy gin) isn’t going to make anyone more charming.
Marcel’s rant was so uncomfortable to watch, I almost thought he was doing some type of parody.
I’ve come to accept that Marcel can cook despite of his personality. I certainly wouldn’t go to any restaurant where he work for fear of actually meeting him though.
Early this season my wife walked into the room during a quickfire and, on seeing Marcel, asked “is he supposed to be Wolverine?” A skinny, drunk, rapping wolverine maybe.
I remember him doing the same thing in his season, although he was usually alone on that roof.
Also, I loved Gail’s exasperated reaction to Marcel doing a foam again.
Marcel is awesome. It’s practically par for the course for a chef to drink way too hard late into the night and make an ass of himself. Even the core of his argument, that he cooks for the challenge and not the judges, was ridiculous. But I still find him likable and amusing. At his worst, it’s like he’s trolling the show.
Bluefish isn’t hard to use. It just has a low culinary reputation, like mackerel. More and more chefs are using them everyday now though. I’ve heard that Americans used to have a low opinion of tuna as well - basically viewing it as cat food.
I wonder what the fishing restrictions were behind the scene. Like if they hooked a shark, could they use it?
And what? Get a bottle across his face?
[sub]too soon[/sub]
Eric Ripert is vacationing in the Caymans with (among others) Jose Andres and Anthony Bourdain- as well as Jen Carroll.
Jen without the chef’s coat.
No shirt or pants either. That girl must work out constantly to have a slammin body like that.
Well I’m impressed.
And as for this week’s episode, I never got the impression Jamie really wanted to be there. But boy there were enough quotes to fill a TV Guide. And did you catch the I Heart Fabio shirt somebody had out on their bed (doctored to include moustache it looked like).
I honestly do not know how or why the others didn’t crack up laughing at his “gangsta” posturing. I was dying laughing. And it would totally be the best way to get his goat if indeed he is even halfway serious.
In thrilling Top Chef news, my sister and I are pretty sure we saw Tiffany (the white one who just got kicked off, not the black one who’s still on the show) on the sidewalk while driving around town today. She said in the disastrous Chinese food episode that she’s from Santa Rosa, California, which is about fifteen miles away.
She looked kind of grouchy.
So I saw a promo on the Syfy channel for a new show featuring Marcel that is set to premier March 7. I would guess that means he doesn’t win, right? Aren’t the winners locked into some deal with Bravo?
Anyway, very interesting interview with Marcel here where he complains about getting the “a-hole edit”. If the examples he offers up are true it seems like there may be some truth to his complaint.
Also, here is an interview with Jamie (the thumb cutter) complaining about getting a bad edit too.
I’m suprised they are suprised by this. I mean, it is television isn’t it? They have to create dramatic tension somehow, right? We all know there is about as much reality in reality television as there is bread in sweetbreads, right?